Encyclopedia

A conference call is a telephone call where the calling party wants to have more than one called party listen in to the audio portion of the call. The conference call may be designed to allow the called party to also talk during the call, or the call may be set up so that the called party merely listens into the call but cannot speak. It is often referred to as an ATC (Audio Tele-Conference).

Some conference calls are set up where the calling party calls the other participants and adds them to the call, and in some cases the other participants call into the conference call, either by dialing into a "conference bridge", a specialized type of telephone that answers multiple calls, or by using a special telephone number set up for that purpose.

Three-way calling is available as an option (usually at an extra charge) for most customers to allow them to add a second, outgoing, call to a call already connected at their number.